—— 
Se 
sg on the Great Exhibition of 1851. 355 
of the sixteenth century presented, as it were, a Great Exhibi- 
tion of the works which men had been producing from the time 
of the downfall of Roman civilization and skill. ‘There too, 
might be seen, by him who travelled from land to land, beanti- 
ful textures, beautiful vessels of gold. and bronze, of porcelain 
and glass, wonderful machines, mighty fabrics; anddrom that 
time, stimulated by the sight of such a mass of the works of hu- 
man skill,—stimulated still more by the natural working of those 
powers of man from which such skill had arisen,—men were led 
to seek for science as well as art; for science as the natural com- 
plement of art, and fulfillment of. the thoughts and hopes which 
art excites ;—for science as the fully developed blossom, of which 
art is the wonderfully involved bud, Stimulated by such influ- 
ences, the scientific tendencies of modern Europe took their 
starting impulse from the Great Exhibition of the productions of 
the middle ages which had accumulated in the sixteenth century ; 
and have ever since been working onwards, with ever-increasing 
vigor, and in an ever-expanding sphere. em 
As the successful scientific speculations 
turies have been the natural sequel to the art-energies 
first place, how grea ‘and unique the 
culiar are some of the lessons which even the most general spee- 
tator, unfit to enter into the details of any of the special arts, 
